I am not much of a breakfast person—wish I was, as I’ve read you metabolize food more efficiently if you eat something in the AM—so jams and jellies are not really part of my repertoire. Except for crabapple jelly.

I think I love it so much because it reminds me of my childhood. When my mother moved east from Memphis, TN, she hired Lucille Shannon from Arkansas, to help with us kids. Lucy was a cozy, reticent woman who smelled like freshly ironed napkins. She could keep a whispered secret, knew when to scold and when to comfort. She brought wonderful southern recipes with her, for chocolate meringue pie, fried fish, and biscuits with homemade crabapple jelly. The beautiful translucent pink jelly had a marvelous old-fashioned flavor, a truly southern taste: sweet, tart, and elegant. Lucy worked for my mother until she retired, and long after I had left home to go to boarding school, but she remains an inimitable part of the narrative of my childhood. I don’t know if I love this jelly because it tastes so good, or if it tastes so good because I loved her. Maybe both. The incredible thing about canning is in doing so I am not only preserving the freshness and bounty of the season, but also capturing a moment in time, a sort of bottled nostalgia, if you will, of the endless golden days of summer, the smell of cut grass, the mad mindless dancing of fireflies at dusk, when all of my life seemed before me, a huge mystery interrupted only by Lucy’s call too come in and wash up for dinner.

I make Lucy’s jelly every year, sometimes with the addition of mint that gives the jelly a candy cane-like flavor. I have one lone crabapple tree outside the cabin in Colorado—the remnants of a nascent kitchen orchard that was decimated one year by a neighbor’s marauding cattle. But the tree produces enough fruit each year to put up eight or so half-pints of jelly. I put up about four half-pints at a time. In general, smaller batches of juice will jell more efficiently than large batches.

Crabapple Jelly
Makes 4 half-pints

Choose tree-ripened fruit that is quite red. Pinkish fruit will produce a very pale jelly. The quantity of jelly you produce depends on how much juice you end up with. The basic recipe is one scant cup of sugar to one cup of juice.

Place the crabapples in a heavy 6 – 8 quart saucepan or Dutch oven. Add enough water to cover the crabapples. If the fruit floats, you’ve added too much water. Cook the crabapples, uncovered, until the fruit is soft, about 10 minutes. The crabapples will look like they have exploded.

Arrange your jelly bag or a sieve lined with two layers of cheesecloth over a deep pot. Wet the bag or cheesecloth so it doesn’t absorb any of the juice. Ladle the crabapples and their water into the jelly bag and let the juice drip through into the pot. You aren’t supposed to squeeze the jelly bag because it can make the jelly cloudy, but I do a little pressing anyway, to speed the process up, and have never had a problem. Measure the juice. You should have about 4 cups.

Jelly bag

You can prepare the juice ahead of time and refrigerate. It holds well for days. You will notice that the pectin will drop to the bottom of the bowl or jar in which you hold the juice. Be sure you get that into the jelly pot when cooking. (It’s okay to use a little water to swish that pectin loose and add it to the jelly pot.)

Place the juice and an equal amount of sugar in a 6 – 8 quart saucepan or Dutch oven. Bring to a boil over a medium low, allowing the sugar to gently dissolve. Then turn up the heat and boil the juice until a candy thermometer placed inside reaches 220˚F. The jelly has to get hot enough or it won’t gel. Watch the foam: when the jelly foam seems to be losing some of its volume, and the foam darkens in color, the jelly is usually ready. Check the temperature, or you can test the jelly by letting a spoonful cool in the fridge. If the jelly drips off the spoon in dribbles, it’s not ready. If it shears off the spoon in a single drop, you’re fine. As soon as you know you are close to having jelled jelly, swish in the spearmint. The longer the spearmint is in the hot jelly, the stronger the flavor. Remove the spearmint before ladling the jelly into the jars.

Have ready 4 sterilized half-pint jars (to sterilize jars and bands, boil for 10 minutes, adding 1 minute for every 1.000 feet above sea level. Simmer new lids in water to soften the rubberized flange.) Spoon the jelly into the jars, wipe the rims, place on the lids, and screw on the bands fingertip tight. Process the jars in a water bath for 5 minutes, adding 1 minute for every 1,000 feet above sea level.

Allow the jars to cool, check the seals, and store them in a cool, dark place.

Eugenia Bone, a veteran food writer who has published in many national magazines and newspapers, is also a cookbook author. She is the author of Well-Preserved (Clarkson Potter 2009). She has contributed to many cookbooks and a few literary journals, been nominated for a variety of food writing awards and participated in radio, interactive and online interviews, in addition to appearing multiple times on television. She lives in New York City and Crawford, Colo.

The secret to tasty food is homemade and seasonal. To do that, you've got to put up food. Well-Preserved reports on small batch preservation year round, and generates recipes from those preserved foods.